WHEREIN I AM BORED AND PARANOID IN BETWEEN MATCH DAYS

[Random Ferndando Muslera pic, just 'cause. Anyhow. Not everyone's dreading the end. This guy's pretty darn excited for it to be over already -- Dave Martin at the Ottawa Citizen: 'As far as I'm concerned, having our TV screens filled with faux football for the last four weeks has been no picnic ... this past month has been a giant annoyance.' It gets me that guys like Martin are paid to write this stuff. Truly, mindless.]

There are two very different emotions swishing around in my head right now. One, granted, is that of anticipation. Who isn't looking forward to the impending Spain/Germany semifinal clash where hopefully Spain will crash out and be generally hilarious*? On the other side of the coin, there's the knowledge that very soon World Cup 2010 will be over. Finito, history, done. And boy, is that itty bitty fact ominous. It f***ing looms. This World Cup will be in the books, the trophy hoisted, confetti strewn all about and then ...well, and then all we'll have is the vast expanse of boredom and an endless stream of unsubstantiated transfer rumours to comfort ourselves with. I'm not certain where your allegiances lie, but having to face the fact that Fabregas is probably going to skip off to Barcelona in a few weeks isn't exactly my idea of a pleasant time.

The seemingly endless days (hours! minutes! seconds!) in between the round of 16, the quarterfinals and so on are already enough for one woman to bear but the slightly paranoid feeling of 'MUST SOAK UP AS MUCH FOOTBALL AS YOU CAN NOWWWWW!!!' is pretty much unbearable. Someone make it stop.

*Please see: the Dame's irrational Spain hateration -- founded mostly on Sergio Ramos' annoying hair, winning Euro 08 with infamous jerk Aragones at the helm, and just being plain better than everyone else... stop being good, damnit.

TIET TMI du Jour: Speaking of 'making it stop' someone make Joachim Loew stop. This is the second time he's done this. And I know he's supposed to be the best dressed manager at this tournament but him and Hansi Flick are wearing matching sweaters so that theory has got to be deftly rattled to pieces at this point.